apocryph.org Notes to my future self

Upgraded to Slickedit 2008 after fascism false alarm

Not long ago the makers of SlickEdit, my favorite programmer’s editor, released the new version, SlickEdit 2008. Since I have an active maintenance and support contract, I got the upgrade free (although it took a few days of support hell to figure out how to get my updated 2008 key).

As a long-time SlickEdit user (I first used Visual SlickEdit 2.x back in the late 90’s) I am used to the painless upgrade process, but this time was different. This time, when I launched Slickedit for the first time, it wanted to activate! As in, Microsoft WGA Fascism Lives DRM Bullshit! From Slickedit of all people! I unplugged my network cable and tried to proceed; sure enough, activation failed.

Through force of will I didn’t know I had, I resisted the urge to type a nuclear nastygram to Slickedit support, and instead came up with this fairly moderate missive:

Support:
I just upgraded to Slickedit 2008 under my Maintenance and Support
contract, only to discover that the new version of SlickEdit has the
same obnoxious phone-home activation feature we all know and love from
Microsoft products like Vista. In order to install SlickEdit on my
laptop I had to either use my Internet connection to get a node-locked
license, or download a node-locked license file.

Before I uninstall SlickEdit and find another text editor, I would
just like to confirm this is indeed the new SlickEdit regime, with no
option to go back to the old Slickedit 2007 offline license key
verification scheme.

I’m sure this new licensing scheme is not support’s doing, and I
apologize for the snarky tone of this email, but I suspect you’d be
grumpy too if you were facing the prospect of learning another editor
(God help me I might even have to use emacs!)

Thanks,

I expected to get some canned MBA “for your safety” bullshit, but instead I got:

Hi Adam,

I copied the “nullpointer” email address because that is the email address used to register your SlickEdit licenses.

The new version of SlickEdit (SE2008) provides two options for licensing, the activation (or phone-home) and the file based which was used prior to SE2008. Obtaining the file based licensing is very easy. Here are the steps:

1. Log into your SlickEdit web account and click the “Registered Products”. Once in the registered Products page…
2. Click on the “Product Description” for your active license (ser#: WLxxxx)…in other words “SlickEdit 2008 Windows/Linux Bundle”…this will open the licensing window.
3. In this window you will have your license key and product install file for the product(s)
4. Click on the “License File (optional)”…this will take you through the process to obtain your file based license

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact myself or our tech support team at 919-473-0070.

Please confirm everything went smoothly.

Best regards,

Wow! So there is a non-node-locked option from Slickedit. Thank God!

Browsing their support forum, it seems I’m not alone. It seems the beta had FlexLM node locking, and users (like me) revolted. I still think Slickedit fucked up here; in the old version the FlexLM license server stuff was for site licenses and numbered users, and you had to seek it out in the installer. This one seems to come by default in that mode. I’m not the only one who missed the option to download the license file, as you can see for yourself in the support forum threads.

Anyway, I’m glad Slickedit listened to its loyal users rather than stubbornly clinging to the users-are-crooks-software-should-phone-home bandwagon. So far I’ve managed to fend off attempts to make AppAssure’s enterprise backup products node-locked and phone-home, and our stuff is alot more expensive than Slickedit. I just hope they can resist the siren’s song of fascist licensing schemes in the future, and that this kerfuffle is just a hiccup along the way.

If Slickedit goes the activation route, I will not continue to use it, just as I refuse to use Vista under the activation regime. Much like Windows, Slickedit is not the only game in town, but switching to another game is time-consuming and painful.